Homosexuality is only legal in the United States because of an act of judicial tyranny committed by the Supreme Court in 2003, in which the Court imposed its view of sexual morality on the entire nation, something these same enlightened folk are always telling us should never be done by anyone to anybody at any time. At any rate, homosexuality is "legal," just like cigarette smoking. And it's just as deadly.

Our public policies toward both behaviors and habits should be similar if not the same. For instance, with regard to our youth, at a minimum we should educate them about the enormous health risks involved in both smoking and homosexuality, urge them not to dabble in either form of behavior, and provide resources to help them quit if they start.

We should not allow pro-homosexual student clubs on middle school and high school campuses any more than we would allow smoking clubs on school grounds.

Recent pieces in the New York Times and The Independent (UK) have stressed that the health consequences of cigarette smoking are far worse even than we thought.

Now the health risks of active engagement in the homosexual lifestyle are roughly comparable to the health risks associated with smoking. For instance, a study published in the International Journal of Epidemiology reported on the impact of homosexuality on life expectancy. Here's how the Journal concluded its abstract on the study (emphasis mine):

In a major Canadian centre, life expectancy at age 20 years for gay and bisexual men is 8 to 20 years less than for all men. If the same pattern of mortality were to continue, we estimate that nearly half of gay and bisexual men currently aged 20 years will not reach their 65th birthday. Under even the most liberal assumptions, gay and bisexual men in this urban centre are now experiencing a life expectancy similar to that experienced by all men in Canada in the year 1871.

So this peer-reviewed scientific journal, hardly a part of the vast, rightwing conspiracy, points out that active participation in the homosexual lifestyle will rob a young man of somewhere between eight and 20 years of his life expectancy, and knock his life expectancy back to what it was in in the 19th century.

Two in every three smokers are killed by their habit, new research has found.

A study of 200,000 people in Australia – smokers and non-smokers over the age of 45 – has found that more people die from smoking tobacco than previously thought.

It was believed that around half of long-term smokers are killed by smoking-related illnesses such as cancer and heart disease but the figure now stands at around 67%...

This means that, based on the study, the 10 million smokers in the UK could be expected to die 10 years earlier than those who never smoked or those who had quit and given their bodies enough time to recover.

A new study adds at least five diseases and 60,000 deaths a year to the toll taken by tobacco in the United States. Before the study, smoking was already blamed for nearly half a million deaths a year in this country from 21 diseases, including 12 types of cancer...

Research has shown that their death rates are two to three times higher than those of people who have never smoked, and that on average, they die more than a decade before nonsmokers.

Analyzing deaths among the participants from 2000 to 2011, the researchers found that, compared with people who had never smoked, smokers were about twice as likely to die from infections, kidney disease, respiratory ailments not previously linked to tobacco, and hypertensive heart disease, in which high blood pressure leads to heart failure. Smokers were also six times more likely to die from a rare illness caused by insufficient blood flow to the intestines...

"The smoking epidemic is still ongoing, and there is a need to evaluate how smoking is hurting us as a society, to support clinicians and policy making in public health," said Brian D. Carter, an epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society and the first author of an article about the study, which appears in The New England Journal of Medicine. "It's not a done story..."

In an editorial accompanying the article, Dr. Graham A. Colditz, from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, said the new findings showed that officials in the United States had substantially underestimated the effect smoking has on public health. He said smokers, particularly those who depend on Medicaid, had not been receiving enough help to quit.

Do we want to discourage young men and women from developing a smoking habit because we hate them? Just the opposite. We love them and don't want to see tobacco deprive them of their health and their very lives.

Do we want to discourage young men and women from developing a homosexual habit because we hate them? Just the opposite. We love them and don't want to see homosexuality deprive them of their health and their very lives.

The Gay and Lesbian Medical Association, again not a part of the vast, rightwing conspiracy, publishes a list of at least 10 health risks associated with homosexuality, lesbianism and transgenderism.

To borrow from the experts the New York Times quotes, we should "evaluate how (homosexuality) is hurting us as a society," reconsider our "policy making in public health," and make sure that homosexuals are "receiving enough help to quit."

We want them to learn they don't have to yield to homosexual impulses any more than they have to yield to the impulse to light up.

Let the conversation begin.

(Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.)

Bryan Fischer

Bryan Fischer is the host of the daily 'Focal Point' radio talk program on AFR Talk, a division of the American Family Association. 'Focal Point' airs live from 1-3 pm Central Time, and is also simulcast on the AFA Channel, which can be seen on the Sky Angel network.